Will “Inside Out” Be Bigger Than “Frozen”? | Our Kids Seem to Think So

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Our family’s very excited to see the new Disney Pixar animated film, Inside Out. So excited, in fact, that I’m really struggling to remember an animated movie my kids were this crazy about before even seeing it.

Even Frozen, which Bella and Jackson went nuts for, didn’t have this kind of build-up going into its release. So will Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust be replacing Anna, Elsa, Olaf, Kristoff and Sven?? Early indications are that they just might.

Seriously, I think the only other movies (in the lifetimes of our kids, at least) that they’ve been pumped up about have been Monsters University and Toy Story 3. But those were both sequels featuring characters they knew.

Inside Out is a completely original film with all new characters. Our kids are falling in love with the characters, and all we’ve seen are a few trailers!!

We were caught off guard by the Frozen craze, and subsequent rush to get toys/merchandise from the movie. This time, I thought I’d start scouting out the situation ahead of time.

I stopped off at the Disney Store in Times Square one night after work and checked out the display of Inside Out merchandise.

There was a big display right in front of the store across from the Frozen merchandise, which is still a hot seller.

They had a modest assortment of clothing, plush dolls, coffee mugs and a few other items.

The coolest were the deluxe talking figures. They light up and say some phrases in the character’s voice. Each comes with a memory ball which you can put your own photo or drawing in to create your own memory.

They also had this guy, who I didn’t know about before seeing him in the store. His name is “Bing Bong”. He’s Riley’s imaginary friend and he helps Joy and Sadness on their adventure. He’s part Elephant, part Cat, part Dolphin and part Cotton Candy. his plush tummy even smells like Cotton Candy (much like Lotso smelled like strawberries.)

It just happened to be right after this month’s Tsum Tsum release, which was a set of 6 characters from Inside Out.

Bella and Jackson love Tsum Tsums. I picked up one of each. As far as collecting goes, this is one of the more inexpensive things to collect. At under $5 each, it’s cheaper than buying trading pins.

I was expecting the kids to fight over which Tsum Tsum they wanted from the new set, but to my surprise, they had already chosen very different favorite characters.

I’m not surprised that Bella picked Joy as her favorite character, but Jackson is clearly identifying with the darker emotions: Fear, Disgust, and Anger. Should we be worried about that?

He’s backing off of Anger at least, and the two of them seem to both like Bing Bong now that they know more about him.

All of the items I saw at the Disney Store are also available for purchase online at Disneystore.com.

Inside Out at Target

At Target, I noticed a small section of Inside Out toys on an end cap. Certainly not as much as the Disney Store had, and it could be that Target will have more once the movie is in the theaters.

What Target did have was pretty cool, though.

The big ticket item was the Headquarters Playset. It comes with Joy you can roll the memory balls around inside and even place them on a stand to project the memory onto the wall of the headquarters. On the box it looks cool, but I wonder how strong the projection is and whether you can actually see it. Perhaps the lights will need to be off?

Next, they had “The Console”, which is the control panel that the emotions use for getting things done. This appears to be made to go along with the Headquarters playset, but both of these come with Joy figures. The figure lights up when it gets into position in front of the console. The package lets you slide the character over to demonstrate that part.

In addition, they had individual light-up figures that you can buy to go with the Console and/or the Headquarters playset.

Target also had a musical Bing Bong figure. He spoke a few phrases when you pressed his bow tie, and even sang the “Bing Bong Song”.

Next up were the plushes. The large plushes talked when you squeezed their hands, saying a few phrases each.

There was also an assortment of smaller plushes that didn’t talk.

As of right now, these toys are only available in store. But I’ve seen the Tomy toys as well as some of the Disney items being sold on Amazon.

The movie comes out soon, and we’ll be taking the kids to see it. I guess we’ll see how they feel after they’ve seen the whole story. Judging by how into these characters they are already, Elsa and Olaf may have to watch out!